


Win One, Lose One

by Miss_Femm



Category: Wait Until Dark (1967)
Genre: Canon Death, Drug Dealing, Drug Use, Explicit Language, F/M, Mentions of sexual violence, Mild Sexual Content, Murder, Off-screen torture, Possessive Behavior, Pre-Canon, Psychology, Two not very nice people manipulating the heck outta one another, Unhealthy Relationships, alcohol use, dark themes, slightly non-chronological
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 06:17:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16887213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Femm/pseuds/Miss_Femm
Summary: The problem with Roat and Lisa was that both liked playing with fire.





	Win One, Lose One

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, this is a long one. I've actually been working on this story for almost four months now-- it's been my side project between my original fiction and other work. I'm pretty pleased with it and a bit sad that it's complete.
> 
> I enjoy writing for this movie, especially these characters. I always headcanoned there was some kind of weird relationship between Roat and Lisa, judging from how the former seems a little reluctant to talk about the latter at times. I figure it would be a case of two people using one another for a variety of reasons, not actual love-- I doubt Roat could actually love anyone but himself in any case. Playing around with what their dynamic might have been before the events of the movie was a challenge and a pleasure.
> 
> At any rate, I hope you guys enjoy this one!

A strained, feminine laugh punctures the tomb-like stillness of the hotel room. “It really is like something from _The Twilight Zone_ …”

Lisa’s sitting on the end of the bed, phone cord wrapped around her palm as she talks with the mark like they’re old friends.

Under the bare light-bulb in this cheap room, she doesn’t look so hot. The pretty face that got that dope photographer Hendrix to take a strange woman’s doll back home for safekeeping is ravaged from an extended period of quality time the newly christened “Harry Roat Jr.,” who’s been working overtime, if he says so himself.

As Lisa yaps away, Roat leans against the wall with a cigarette, staring at her with a neutral expression that tends to unnerve people more than a scowl does.

“Well that’s alright. Little Cindy’s still recovering at the hospital, poor thing.”

An interesting contrast, the frustration contained in her eyes and mouth juxtaposed with the cheerful, nonchalant voice she’s put on for Hendrix’s benefit. She’s been on the line for three minutes now. Roat knows this will be fruitless, but he waits in silence, trying not to clench his cigarette too tightly.

Not even six days into the new year and he’s already having to play the problem-solver. Not that he minds. His greatest virtue is patience.

Once he waited hours in some female hit’s apartment, sitting dead still on the edge of her unmade bed, Geraldine in hand, until she came stumbling home hungover, mascara streaking her cheeks. A lonely lady prone to melancholia whose life was inconvenient and whose death was worth a lot of dinero. Roat made sure her last hour was far less lonely than her life had been. The memory makes him warm.

However, even the patron saint of patience would have to admit Lisa’s something else, a great living, breathing endurance test if ever there was one. A normal man would have killed her already, just out of frustration. But he approaches it like a game, one that takes sweet time to win. Patience.

“Yes, I know you are, Mr. Hendrix. Trust me, I’m grateful. That doll was not cheap.” Lisa bites her thumb nail, listening. “Yes, I’ll check in again tomorrow. No, I’ll call you. Bye-bye, now.”

She slams the phone on the receiver, then glowers up at Roat. When she speaks, her tone is no longer all sweetness and light. It’s hard and tired.

“He says it’s still lost. Swears it was on the coffee table.”

“But it’s not.”

“No. It’s not.”

Roat clicks his tongue before taking another drag. “Things aren’t looking too good for you and your pal, are they?”

“I told you, he’s not my pal.”

“Everyone’s your pal, Lisa.”

Lisa slams her fist against the mattress. “I’m telling you, this guy’s nobody! I gave it to him because I knew he’d be the last to do anything like—”

“Anything like you would do?” Sauntering to Lisa’s side, Roat rolls the cigarette between his fingers, examining the glow at the end with mock solemnity.

Lisa narrows her eyes. “You’re not a stellar man yourself.”

“I don’t take from the company till, dear.”

A little, bitter laugh. “Yeah. Aren’t you such a loyal employee? Or maybe just a fucking tool who can’t do anything for himself without asking the—”

Roat grabs her chin, burying his nails into her skin and pulling her face up toward him.

“Never know when to shut up, do you?” He roughly runs his thumb across her mouth, smearing her lipstick. “If you’re going to keep insulting me, maybe I should just put your mouth to better use…”

Lisa wrenches herself away from his hand, falling back to the mattress. She raises her hand to wipe her mouth, like his touch was poisonous. Arm upturned, Roat examines a series of cigarette burns seared across the sensitive skin, still raw and angry.

Roat puts the cigarette back between his teeth, biting down so hard he almost breaks it. “You’re on thin ice, dear. Anymore disrespectful chatter like that and you won’t get the chance to get your neck off the block.”

Lisa’s still scowling, but her complexion grows more ashen. Still, she’s able to keep her tone steady, “If you kill me now, you’ll never find it. He’ll only want to talk to me. I’m the nice lady he met on the plane, not you.”

Roat crouches down so the two of them are face-to-face. When he takes the cigarette out his mouth again, he positions the tip close to her knee, where he rests his hand. She meets his gaze with that defiant look she wears so well, the one she’s made her trademark. He blows a stream of smoke into her face, a little disappointed when she doesn’t flinch.

“Who said I was going to kill you, Lisa?” he asks softly, face fixed in a cold smile.

-

The next morning, they wait in his van on the corner until the Hendrix lovebirds leave St. Luke’s Place. It’s not a very stand-up place to live. Most of the tenants seem as determined as possible to stay away from the dump they’re dumb enough to pay rent for. Even the landlord never makes an appearance. Maybe he’s embarrassed to be in charge of such an eyesore. All for the best.

Roat tosses a cigarette nub out the window, smirking when an old woman passing by gives him a disapproving glance. Lisa can’t sit still. She pulls her lynx coat about her neck, hums along with the radio. Sometimes she shoots him a side-eye, not exactly fearful, but calculating.

What was that old saying? While there’s life, there’s hope? Lisa’s current motto for sure. She might have her back to the wall, but she’s still looking for a way out of this mess she created. Foolish maybe, but her persistence is admirable, he has to give her that.

She turns up the radio. He dials it back down. Gotta stay focused. The Supremes at max volume is only going to give him a headache. From the look on her face, Lisa isn’t sympathetic.

“Am I not allowed to have any fun while I’m in the corner, pa?”

“Keep your eye on the building.”

“I _am_. I can still have some music, can’t I?”

“Keep your eye on the building, Lisa.”

“You can’t tell me—”

“Shut up.”

Lisa bites her bottom lip so hard he expects blood to dribble down her chin. In better circumstances, she’d call him a creepy bastard, tell him he isn’t her old man, he can’t boss her around. Not right now though. She leans back, hands in her pockets, biding time.

Things normally aren’t so awkward between the two of them. Out of all the people Roat’s worked with, Lisa is the closest he’s had to a regular partner. Most people don’t care for collaborating with Roat, certainly not more than once. Maybe he enjoys his work too much—that’s always been his theory. Even those who keep him on payroll to do their dirty work refer to him as “that little fucking creep” when they think he isn’t listening. He doesn’t give a shit. In fact, it amuses him, having power over the powerful.

Lisa’s different. From their first encounters, she never seemed frightened of him, only curious. She knew about his grisly reputation, but that only made dealing with him more exciting, he supposed—women loving “bad boys.” Maybe she thought she could handle him.

She seemed to make seducing the infamous thug a little game. But she never seduced him, never did anything he didn’t allow her to do. When she finally got what she wanted, it was only at his whim. In his own way, he’d seduced her.

With most women, he makes their skin crawl. Not Lisa. There’s something strange about a woman who’s that friendly and easy-going around him of all people. Very interesting. So, the fascination is mutual, to say the least.

And then one sad day came trouble in paradise. The boss learned Lisa was coming back two days early on a heroin-smuggling job with plans to run off with the merchandise. When Roat heard the news, he’d no trouble believing it, even if he hadn’t anticipated it: Lisa chafes under authority and always liked the idea of striking out on her own.

An enterprising girl, that Lisa. An arrogant one too. Roat couldn’t tolerate arrogant women, especially when they messed with him.

He could see her betraying the others. But him? She was dumber than he thought.

But Roat’s professionalism gets a bit of the edge over his anger at being tricked—almost being tricked. He’s got goods to account for, a defector to punish. The work is the one good thing, the thing that keeps him from going crazy.

The boss knows he doesn’t get attached to his partners, that he doesn’t mind whacking whoever deserves it, so he gets double-duty: kill the lying bitch and get the heroin back with as little police involvement as possible, as soon as possible. Luckily, he’d cooked up a way to kill those two birds with one stone.

“Look who’s leaving the nest,” says Lisa.

Sweet Mrs. Hendrix emerges from the basement apartment, cane sweeping before her. She hastily combs her hair with her fingers. Face agitated, her lips move, like she’s mumbling a little stream of cuss words—no doubt schoolgirl ones, like “golly” or “crap.” Must be running late to blind school.

Lisa goes to open the door as Mrs. Hendrix passes by the van, but Roat grabs her arm and wrenches her back against him. She hisses through her teeth. He’s grabbed her burned arm.

“Ah, ah, ah, wait a moment, dearest.”

She tries to wriggle out of his grip, but no dice. “She can’t see us!” She says it strained, trying to fight back the pain.

“No, but the neighbors might. Remember, there’s five tenants in this building. Only four have gone out.”

“I can do the math!”

“Can’t have two odd people running into the Hendrix place so soon. Right?” He twists her arm to emphasize his point.

Suppressing a cry, Lisa pulls her arm free and backs away, hitting the passenger door.

“I know what I’m doing!”

“You know how to get caught. I don’t care if you screw up your own plans, but you won’t be messing up mine.”

Her indignant gaze moves to Roat’s obscured eyes. She’s more angry than afraid. It’s charming. And infuriating. No matter what, it seems impossible to break her spirit, and he can’t decide if he likes that or not.

He redirects his attention to the building. The final birdie stomps out the nest, a thirty-something woman walking like she’s a queen. Suitcase in hand, cigarette between her red lips, making a beeline for the parking lot. A weekend trip, hopefully. The less people in that dump, the better.

“And I’m sure you’ve got everything figured out as usual, right?” Lisa says.

“Mm-hm.”

“Always your way.”

“My way gets results,” he says, opening the driver door. “Yours gets your neck on the block. Now get out. We got work to do.”

-

Amazing, how much someone’s abode says about them.

Take Lisa’s old apartment for example, a place he was lucky to grace only once: colorful clothes and beer bottles and movie magazines tossed every direction, the sweet smell of pot ripe in the kitchenette—a fine testament to her free-spirit and sometimes delightful lack of manners. As for himself, he’s got no home, never has: he spends nights in vans and motel rooms, never carrying more than clothes, tools, and a “medicine box.”

On the flip side, the Hendrix apartment is a cozy little place, a sunny spot in what is an otherwise run-down old building. Monochrome photographs line the brick walls. Books on shelves. The pretty blind wife keeps everything neat and ordered, every inch of the spare space utilized efficiently. Throw pillows on every sofa, a little rocking chair, even a dark room. Everything in its place. Roat admires that. He likes organization, hierarchy.

They spend hours there, combing through shelves and drawers and under the beds and tables with plastic-covered fingers, everything confirming what Lisa was told on the plane: Korean war vet, photographer, blind wife, no kids, no animals.

No doll either.

Lisa can’t shut up as they rummage through the respectable Hendrix home: she doesn’t know where it is, she didn’t know who this man was, surely he didn’t find anything and get the cops, surely he didn’t pinch the stuff himself, surely, surely, surely. It’s enough to drive a man insane, but Roat is a patient fellow.

He tells her to shut up because he already came up with a Plan B. Another show, the kind they’ve both done before, though rarely together. She calms down some when he tells her she’ll be playing a role too, maybe the most important part of this little drama.

“Oh God, why didn’t you tell me that from the start?” she says, a little laughter in her voice. Some of the old smugness relaxes back into her features, making her look less haggard.

“I like surprising people,” he says, viewing her returning arrogance with a blend of distaste and amusement.

He can sense what’s in her mind: everything is on him, not the boss, because after all, the boss, hardened and ruthless as he is, likes Lisa. Everybody likes Lisa. Who couldn’t forgive such a dear? All she needs to do is please Roat and doesn’t she already know how?

His blood boils, but he keeps things cool. All in good time.

Lisa plops onto the couch, sprawling out like she owns it. “Who’ll I be this time?”

“Oh, this’ll be a different role for you. More exciting than the smoldering temptress who lands her buddies prison time or even the nice lady on the plane from Montreal.”

“And what’s that?”

“The gorgeous, unfaithful wife.”

She waves a dismissive hand. “I’ve done that one before.”

“But not with me playing the sad, cuckolded husband.”

“No… You’re always something else…”

“We’re going to be Harry and Liciana Roat.”

“As good a ring to it as Romeo and Juliet.”

He smirks. “Right.”

Pulling a notebook from one of his jacket pockets, he goes to the phone and dials the number hastily written on the pad. When the other end answers, he rattles off a series of subservient apologies in a marvelous Italian accent, so fast that much of it is hard to catch.

When he puts the phone back on the receiver, Lisa says, “What the hell was all that about?”

“Miss Liciana Roat had an appointment with Mr. Hendrix. Your adoring male secretary says you’ll be late. In fact, Miss Liciana won’t be able to make it at all. She’s the kind of woman who misses a lot of things. Gets distracted.”

“Oh.”

He sits down by the typewriter, starts clacking away at the keys. He hasn’t the grace of a trained typist to say the least, which makes Lisa smirk. He notices in his peripheral vision, but doesn’t react. What’s another second of her thinking him foolish?

“What are you doing now?” she asks.

“Leaving a message on the door for our fellow collaborators. I’m expecting them shortly.”

“What? You’ve got more people on this job?”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you, we have a bigger dramatis personae this time,” he says brightly. “So, I invited those two old pals of yours.” He mentions their names, sounding out every syllable. Lisa frowns, shrinking back into the cushions as he looks over his note.

She’s shocked he remembers. He knows it.

It had been around the time they started their strange affair: after the sex, she started getting careless, spilling things about herself in loving detail, things he didn’t really want to know but didn’t tell her to stop either. He figured she must have expected him to share something of his own sordid past in return, but he kept his lips sealed. Anyone who knew a thing about his past was either dead or associated him with another name, the one on his birth certificate. For all anyone knew, the guy registered there evaporated like magic long ago.

Lisa liked being an open book in comparison. Much of the post-coital confession was about two saps she used to run with between ’60 and ‘62, the salacious cons they pulled, the bizarre love triangle between them in the off-duty hours, how it all came to a sad end when she let them rot in jail for her when one of their marks got wise. Though he found the tale rather embarrassing, he stored the names and details away, in case they’d someday be useful.

Turns out, he’d been right.

“Why bother with them? They’ve got nothing to do with it.”

“They’ll be grateful to have another job right outta jail.”

Finished, he wrenches the paper out, folds it, walks to the door, tapes the message on the outside, shuts the door behind him.

“Bedroom.”

“What? Why?”

He answers without a beat, “Because your hair looks like shit. I don’t want your friends to think all those sad years behind bars weren’t worth it.” He says the last sentence with a pronounced nastiness. Lisa looks like she could snap his neck with pleasure, but dutifully marches into the bedroom, Roat following behind, hands in his pockets.

The Hendrix bedroom is dusky, even with the early afternoon sunlight filtering through the window blinds. Flipping on the light as she enters, Lisa gets in front of the vanity mirror, running her gloved fingers through her hair. She asks what the scenario will be.

“Harry thinks Liciana’s banging Hendrix. She left her beloved doll with him as a token of their amor—”

“Hey wait, I thought we were pulling one over on Hendrix.”

“We are—just not the Hendrix you’re thinking about.”

Lisa laughs. “Oh, the blind wife! Poor lady, having to compete with me.”

Some of her old edge is back. Were he given to obnoxious displays of laughter, Roat would have bust a gut. She was so used to screwing over dumb saps who thought with their cocks that she figured there was no risk any longer. Like a kid, she couldn’t resist playing with fire. A shame everyone has to grow up eventually.

“But she won’t know where it is, would she?” asks Lisa. “I mean, if Hendrix doesn’t know where it is, why would his wife?”

“For all we know, they know what’s in there and played us.”

Lisa rolls her eyes. “That’s silly. Do they look like dope pushers?”

“A lot of dope pushers don’t look like dope pushers. You assume Hendrix’s telling the truth.”

“I’m pretty sure he is. He’s as square as they come.”

He smirks, doesn’t even try to hide his contempt. The most normal-looking people often turn out to be thrill-killers and rapists and dope fiends. How many people assumed he was a mail delivery boy or some junkie passed out on the street or a forgiving moron who’d give his pretty partner an opportunity to cheat him before they learned the truth at the end of a knife?

Truth be told, he doubts the Hendrixes are hiding anything—but there’s no room to take chances. He would get his merchandise one way or another. He wasn’t going to allow anyone else to have the chance to screw him over.

“Well, we’re going to find out. If they know something, I have a feeling Mrs. Hendrix will be more than happy to share, once we lay out my little scenario for her.” He glances at the oversized garment bag hanging empty on the inside of the closet.

“And what’s your fabulous scenario, Shakespeare?”

“We’re going to wait for your friends first. I don’t like repeating myself.”

He walks to the window and closes the blinds. The first phase of the plan is incoming. He wishes he could use Geraldine. It would be so quick and make a ghastlier picture for Lisa’s long-lost lover boys, but it’s much too bloody. This business was much easier with the lonely lady: being an established sob sister, it took little effort to make her death look like a messy suicide once he stripped her down and dumped her in the bathtub, red from her wrists streaming down the porcelain edges.

But nothing could ever be so simple with Lisa, could it?

“Why did you shut the blinds?” Lisa asks.

“Well, what we do in the bedroom is no one else’s business.”

Her gaze flickers to the doorway, then to the window. The charm of the Hendrix boudoir must be wearing thin. Or maybe like she doesn’t enjoy his society like she used to. Maybe he makes her sick—maybe he always has.

She makes him sick too though, so who cares?

Lisa wanders over to the closet to inspect Mrs. Hendrix’s fashion sense. Her nose wrinkles. “She doesn’t believe in colors that pop, does she?”

He won’t permit her to go off-topic. Not when he’s so close to the moment. “You must’ve thought they were pretty fucking dumb, huh Lisa?”

Of course, he doesn’t really mean “they.” The moment the words burst into being, he wonders if he’s made a verbal gaffe, left an opening for Lisa to exploit.

Instead she gets angry, slamming the closet door. It bounces against the frame. “What the hell are you preaching to me for?”

He puts a gloved finger to his lips as he takes a seat on the end of the bed. “Be quiet, Lisa. Whatever will the neighbors think?”

She ignores the smarminess. “What happened, happened! If they can’t get over it, too bad!”

The words are laced with reluctant guilt. It’s something, her feeling bad for someone else, not laughing behind their back. It enrages him more, but he keeps it in.

“Oh, they probably have, if they’re like you say,” he replies. “Probably come crawling back to you like the glorified lapdogs they are.”

Roat’s never seen either man, but he hates them already, has rarely felt such contempt. Letting a woman jerk them around by the privates. How close he was to being in that boat too, but he isn’t like them.

“God, you’re such a—” She stops.

First, Roat assumes she’s realized closing her trap is all for the best, now that she’s utterly at his mercy. When he glances at her, expecting blank-eyed defeat, something awful hits him: he’s wrong.

She’s looking down at him, puzzled and not as frightened as he wants her to be. Then something comes over her, the corner of her mouth curling upward. A knowing, sadistic look, one he’s worn so many times when looking into the face of his victims, those times where business and pleasure meet and mingle, becoming one. It’s been a long time since he was at the receiving end.

“You’re taking this a bit personally, aren’t you?” she says slowly, savoring every word.

He shakes his head. “No, dearest. I’m not the only one you screwed over. You’ve made a lot of people unhappy, Lisa.”

“But not as much as you.” Lisa starts to circle the bed, arms crossed and flexing her fingers, plastic gloves crinkling. “You know, I never thought you were the jealous kind. You’re just so… cold about everything but work. Now I think that might not be so true.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

She paces, back and forth, back and forth. He sits still—not passive, but waiting, like a coiled rattlesnake.

“It’s not about me taking from the company till—it’s me leaving you on your ass! And why shouldn’t I?” She’s raised her voice. He can hear the anger building, boiling to the surface. “What do you give me that I can’t get anywhere else?”

“Thin ice, Lisa,” he says through clenched teeth, but she doesn’t stop. She not only doesn’t care that she’s on thin ice, but starts cracking said ice with gleeful aplomb.

“You actually think you’re so different from the other men I’ve run with. But up close, without a knife in your hand, what are you? A goddamn, junkie bore! I don’t even know why I put up with you all this time!”

“You ‘put up’ with me because you like doing dumb shit, Lisa,” he says, speaking every word as though to a slow child. “Like thinking you could pull one over on me.”

“And I did.”

“No, you didn’t. And I ain’t like those other men, because I’m not stupid enough to get caught. Especially for something like you.”

Now she’s shaking, but not from fear. She’s agitated, on fire, words spilling out with such violence that he assumes they must have been pent-up inside her for a while now.

“That’s all anyone is to you, isn’t it? _Things_. Well, I’m sick of the dirty power trips! I call the shots in my life! You think you own me, but guess what, partner? You never have! And you never fucking will! And I’ve proved it to you! _Proved it!_ ”

And then, she spits in his face. Right between the eyes.

That’s when he shoots up from the bed, fists clenched. Gasping, Lisa staggers back, hitting the vanity and knocking over the Hendrix wedding portrait.

The things he could do to that bitch— break her nose, throw her to the floor, force himself on her until she’s so hoarse she can’t even whisper from the screaming, anything to obliterate the stupid notion that she ever had anything over him, that she was ever for a moment out of _his_ power.

But he keeps himself under control. Withdrawing a tissue from a box on the vanity, Roat wipes her saliva off his face with all the dignity of a court dandy, then flashes her a smirk. The strain of it is so ghastly that Lisa goes pale.

“My apologies, sweet lady.” He crumples the tissue in his hand, then puts it in his pocket.

Expelling a short, shaky breath, Lisa runs a hand through her hair, glowers again. Roat strides over to the doorway, acting like he isn’t listening as she yells, “Aren’t I already making up for it by helping you get the damn thing back?”

Roat pushes the door shut with his foot, then locks it from the inside, making sure it’s loud when the lock catches. He jiggles the handle before turning to face her.

“Oh, you will. Even more so once you get perfectly in character. In fact, darling,” he says, approaching her with the slow advance of a predator, “you’ll be perfectly convincing.”

Lisa freezes. She opens her mouth as though to plead, but for once, Lisa is incapable of sound. Then, she heads for the window, a last-ditch effort to save herself from losing the game.

She never touches the blinds.

-

Lisa’s body hangs there in the garment bag, head drooping, looking all the world like a sad child.

Pulse still raging, Roat runs a hand through his mussed-up hair, then touches the side of his nose. Lying bitch knocked his glasses off during the struggle, right when her nails were going for his eyes. She’d put up one hell of a fight, he had to admit, never relenting until the blood no longer reached her brain.

Shutting the closet door and locking it, he pockets the key, straightens the wedding portrait on the vanity, thankful the glass didn’t crack. Then he puts himself together, grabs Lisa’s discarded coat, shoves it into a bag, and makes his exit.

A diverse bunch populate the sidewalks—kids playing hooky and sharing cigarettes over battered issues of _Iron Man_ , bespectacled old men with their pipes and newspapers, middle-aged women walking to the grocery. No one pays him any mind.

That’s the lovely part about this city: people can hear someone shrieking for help in alleyway, an odd man come and go into a normal little apartment, and yet all uphold the sacred virtue of minding one’s own business. Willfully, they make themselves as blind as poor Mrs. Hendrix.

Roat climbs into the van, doesn’t bother with the heater. He takes out a cigarette and a match as he waits for the other two lackeys to make their grand entrance.

His mind replays the incident in the apartment, the frenzied agony of Lisa’s last moments, her dogged refusal to beg him for mercy. She used her last breaths to inform him just how much of a bastard he was. It isn’t like the lonely lady, screams muffled beneath his palm as he unleashed Geraldine right before her terrified, bloodshot gaze. Indeed, it isn’t like any other kill he can bring to mind.

He thinks of Lisa’s cadaver hanging in that closet among Mrs. Hendrix’s skirts and dresses. He thinks of how it will lay stiff in the morgue tomorrow. Something like melancholy hits him. Lisa. She was something else. She’d fooled him. Almost.

Oh well. There are a lot of things he can do without. Lisa’s one of them. He tosses his cigarette nub out the window and leans back with his hands in his pockets, waiting in a cloud of smoke.

-

New Year’s Night 1967, an hour after midnight. They check in as Mr. and Mrs. Baron at a cheap hotel. The bleary-eyed old man at the check-in counter gives them a curious glance-over, but drops the room key into “Mr. Baron’s” palm, mumbling “Room 137” and how that’s the most sound-proof room they’ve got. From here, they can still hear all the reveling in the street.

Lisa’s hair is littered with glitter and confetti. She has a carry-on in one hand and a paper bag with whiskey in it tucked in the crook of her other arm, holding it the way a queen might carry a rose bouquet. He has both hands shoved into black trench-coat pockets, stalking away from the desk like a shadow made solid. A cigarette droops from his lips.

The moment they’ve left the entrance room, Lisa starts talking.

“Mr. and Mrs. Baron? Who are you kidding? We don’t look married.”

“How so?”

“Neither you or me look like the marrying type.”

“Well then, that’s makes us perfect for each other.”

The lighting in the hallway is either a victim of poor budgeting or a deliberate attempt to hide how filthy this hotel is. The bulbs in the dusty light fixtures look as though they’re on their last leg, flickering eerily above as the two try to find their room. Some of the numbers plastered to the doors hang crooked or upside down.

“You got your ticket?” he asks, keeping his eyes on the door numbers.

“Sure, boss. Right in my bag.”

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“I’m not. I’m telling you where it is.” A brief, breath-long pause. “We could always go to a party, you know. There’s three or four going on right this minute.”

“Yeah? Because I’m the party type?”

“Could be if you tried.” Genuine irritation laces her tone and he isn’t in the mood for it.

“Quit bitching.”

“You’re the one bitching, dragging me out of anything fun. Christ forbid I ever do what I want on my own time.”

“You never need an excuse to party. You can skip one night.”

“It’s been a lot of nights lately.”

“You got work tomorrow. Responsibilities.”

“It’s just a plane ride. Besides, by the time I’m in Canada, all I’ll have to do that day is call old Louis and tell him I’m there.”

“Yeah, and hope you can string two fuckin’ words together. I heard that old fart barely speaks English as it is. I don’t need you screwing us out of a good pay day.”

“He speaks English enough.” Hands occupied, she tosses her hair back with a flippant jerk of the head. “And besides, my drinking habits haven’t screwed up any pay days yet. Just fess up—you enjoy bossing me around.”

“You enjoy bein’ bossed around.”

They reach room 137. After dropping his cigarette stub to the floor and grinding it with his foot, he puts the key in the lock. It doesn’t budge. He has to slam his weight into the door to get the damn thing open. Cheap ass hotel. The van would have served their purpose just as well. Then again, it is New Year’s Night, a special occasion, so he might as well humor darling Lisa.

He shuts the door behind them with his foot, briefly pushing his dark glasses low onto the bridge of his nose to survey their dingy domain for the night: peeling wallpaper, unwashed floor, the bathroom door open menacingly.

Lisa throws her bag onto the bed. The frame trembles more than it should from the impact. He whistles long and low, pushing his glasses back up.

“High quality amenities.”

“I hope that thing doesn’t give out,” adds Lisa as she shrugs off her coat, tossing it onto a nearby table. He sheds his coat too, folding it then laying it over a beat-up chair. Lisa’s wearing a pale green mini-dress and it’s the only color in the place.

Lisa’s already breaking into the whiskey. She hands the bottle to him after downing nearly a quarter. He takes a modest dosage before sitting on the edge of the bed, springs creaking loudly beneath him.

“You sure know how to pick ‘em,” he says in-between swigs.

“I didn’t beg to spend the night in this filthy hole. I told you, we should’ve just gone down to my place if you’re so insistent on my company tonight.”

“You think your rathole isn’t fucking filthy?”

“Hey! It’s the Ritz in comparison.” She smirks, then saunters over to the bed, taking the bottle. “Then again, you like keeping these little things secret, don’t you?”

“You know my rules.”

“Sure, have no life for the cops to know about. I can still think it’s dreadfully sad, can’t I?”

In reality, it’s both “no life for the cops AND any of the other bastards I work with,” but he doesn’t bother correcting her.

Then she takes a long draught, head tilted all the way back, bust on prominent display, like she’s in a commercial. He takes in the sight with silent appreciation. Lisa could’ve been a model.

“You’ll be back in a week,” he says, looking away to examine the yellowing roses and bee patterns on the wall.

“Hm? Oh yeah. One week. You’ll pick me up.” She licks her lips, full and pink. “I know what I’m doing. We don’t need to go over it like a catechism.” She walks over and all but jumps onto his lap, hands the bottle back to him and then wraps an arm around his shoulders.

“Tell me, Mr. Baron, what am I supposed to call you while we aren’t working?”

“I’m always working.”

“Oh, bullshit. I need something to call you right now and it sure as hell isn’t going to be Baron.” Then she comes in close, nips an ear lobe before whispering, “Come on. What name am I supposed to scream in the throes of desperate passion?”

“I don’t mind the usual ‘ohhhh God, ohhhh God.’ Fits me about right.”

Lisa sits back up, rolling her eyes. “I can’t decide if you’re mysterious or just boring.”

“I’m smart.”

“I wonder, do you even remember your real name anymore? The one on your birth certificate. Assuming you have a birth certificate somewhere…”

He shrugs, though of course he remembers. He wishes he didn’t.

“Oh, come on! I _know_ you remember. You’re just not telling me.”

“Then why ask?”

“Because I want you to tell me.”

“No.”

“I’ll bet it’s something like Jeffrey. Or Elmer or Ignatius.” She laughs at her own whimsy. He doesn’t dignify that schoolgirl nonsense with an answer. That doesn’t stop her. “Am I getting warmer? No? Let’s go alphabetical then. Adam? Alan? Archibald?”

“Cut that shit out, Lisa.”

“Not until you tell me who you really are.”

“I’m nobody.”

“Bullshit. Give me a real answer.”

“That is the answer.”

“Oh, come on. I can’t just call you partner like some cowboy…”

He shrugs. “But I am your partner. Might as well.”

“Oh, what a cop-out! Here, give me another drink!”

She goes for the booze, but he holds it out of her reach.

“Hey! What gives?”

He puts the bottle on the nightstand. Lisa goes to get up and grab it, but he quickly slams a hand to her throat and shoves her down against the mattress.

She stares up at him, stupefied from the sudden violence, breathing heavily. He doesn’t remove the pressure against her throat as he looms over her, face neutral.

“Question hour’s over,” he says, dead serious.

She looks up at him, not moving, trying to gauge if she’s in real trouble or not. With him, he imagines it must be hard to tell. He relishes that brief moment of fear, the wideness of her eyes, the way her pulse races beneath his palm.

Then she laughs, wrapping her index finger around the right arm of his glasses, pulling them off with all the flirtatiousness of a strip-tease before setting them aside.

“Well, if you’re going to ravish me, do it while I’m good and tipsy,” she says.

They waste no time. He presses his lips against her neck as he undoes the back of her dress. She gasps sharply, fingers curling around his shoulders.

Then she becomes assertive, all but tearing the buttons off his shirt, scratching his back to hell with her manicured nails. When he feels her fingers descend to the fastenings on his pants, he takes hold of her wrists, pinning them beside her ears.

“Greedy girl,” he sneers against her throat. The mattress creaks uneasily during the struggle and he honestly wonders if it’s going to give in. Cheap fucking hotel.

“Oh, shut up!” Then she hisses through clenched teeth when he bites hard enough to break the skin on her shoulder. “Bastard…”

“Language, language…”

It’s always like this when they fuck. More a battle than anything else. Sometimes, it seems like they come out with more scratches and bruises than if they’d straight up fought.

Lisa twists both wrists free from his death grip. Before he can wrestle her back down, she clutches the hair at the back of his head, scratching his scalp and forcing his lips to hers. He drives his tongue past her lips, hoping she can taste her own blood. When she bites him back, he tastes his own.

-

Shoddy craftsmanship and their nocturnal activities aside, the cheap bed remains intact, even if the mattress does feel like it’s sagging quite a bit beneath their combined weight. Cast-off clothes surround it like a protective circle.

When he wakes up, his head is swimming and the skin on his neck is aching from a trail of hickeys. Stranger still, Lisa’s asleep on top of him, head in the crook of his neck, feet comically over the edge of the bed. He should push her off, but she feels so warm in this poorly-heated hotel room that he lets her stay where she is.

Her breath is soft and even. The grey morning light shines through a sizeable tear in the cheap curtains, illuminating the outline of her hair, making it look platinum.

Peaceful, such an alien sensation. One he doesn’t trust. At every moment, there’s someone out there wanting to cut your throat. Yet for once, he lets the sensation take him. How long has it been since he’s felt so… quiet?

Before he can stop himself, he runs a hand through her hair, gathering some between his fingers. Tenderness does not rush through him, the way it might with a normal lover. It’s something else, but he can’t place it.

Belonging perhaps—she belongs to him, the same way Geraldine does. It doesn’t matter that the relationship is “open” in every way but honesty. Oh, they’re square as far as business goes, but the world of the cheap hotel mattresses is another deal.

She’s playing a game. Then again, aren’t both of them? It’s as much about winning for him as it is for Lisa, as much about the thrill of the thing— believing you’re the one on top. The delicious part is he is on top, only Lisa doesn’t know it. She can believe whatever she wants.

Then she wakes up, eyelashes fluttering against his chest, and he retracts his touch as though she were made of live coals. She asks him what time it is. He says time to get her ass out of bed. Groaning, she rolls off him. The chill of the room presses upon him all at once as Lisa gathers up her dress and slip at the foot of the bed. Cheap fucking hotel.

“Jesus, I hope a roach didn’t crawl into any of this,” she says with a slight slur, picking up his shirt and tossing it to him. He catches it with one hand, then reaches for his sunglasses on the nightstand. “So, did you enjoy petting my head?”

Something unpleasant rushes through him. He ignores it. “What’re you talkin’ about?”

“Oh, come on! It was cute of you.”

“Dreaming.”

“No. I don’t think so.”

Lisa glances over her shoulder while she ties her hair up. He’s cleaning his sunglasses with his shirt, a grim sense of purpose dominating his features. He won’t look at her.

“Don’t tell me I made you mad.”

“Pray tell, what is there to be mad about?”

Lisa doesn’t answer. She’s probably rolling her eyes at him. Let her think whatever she wants.

“I’m going to shower real quick,” she says.

“You’re going to be late.”

“We have two hours.”

“So?”

“So, I don’t need to smell like cheap hotel sex. What’s the rush?”

“Gotta get back to work.”

“Work, work, work. Is that all you think about?”

He gestures to her panties, still discarded on the floor, before pulling his arms through the shirt sleeves. “Obviously not.”

She has a good laugh at that.

“I’ll be fast!”

She shuts herself in the bathroom. In no time, steam fills the room, creeping from beneath the door crack, yet the room still seems cold somehow.

-

They take a cab to the airport. Her eyes shift to him now and then, curious. The talk is small: she doesn’t like the winter, she wishes she knew more French, she always worries that when someone’s speaking a foreign language nearby they might be insulting her and she wouldn’t even know. He lets her keep going, nods now and then.

They get to the airport, go through the usual procedure. To anyone behind the desk, they look like any other oddly-matched young couple. No need to put on a big act. Then it’s time for her to be off and she turns to him, tone bright and theatrical.

“I’ll be back in a week, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You’ll pick me up?”

“Yeah.”

“No goodbye kiss?”

He shrugs, frowning.

For a moment, Lisa looks at him, something cooking behind those big eyes. Then she advances, winding her fingers around the lapel of his coat. She kisses him on the lips, soft and lingering, nothing like what they do in bed. He doesn’t pull away because it wouldn’t do to make a scene in public.

Lisa pulls away, smirks at his neutral expression. “See ya, partner.” She tugs the brim of his hat before she turns away.

He watches her, not budging until her shrinking form disappears into a crowd, though he can still hear her shoes clicking in the noisy hum. Her scent lingers on his skin and coat. So does the kiss on his lips.

Just then, it hits him: he doesn’t have anything else to do today—no work, not the least little thing to keep him occupied. The first in a long time. He frowns to think of idle hours.

Without much of an alternative, he goes to the movies, sitting in the back behind the sparse matinee crowd. He smokes through an entire pack while only barely paying attention to the Technicolor corn parade projected three stories high. If his work didn’t pay so well, he’d be angry at spending any bread on the dumb thing.

When he leaves the theater, he walks around, hands in his coat pockets. Dusk falls, night following swiftly after. He walks among a crowd without quite feeling he’s part of it. The aimlessness makes him irritated.

Once it’s dark enough, he gets in the back of his van, rummages for a needle in his “medicine box.” Lies back, not even bothering to take off his glasses when alone. For a little while, he doesn’t have to be anyone.


End file.
